End of 2007 saw the release of a masterpiece, the iPhone, which was soon followed by iPod Touch. Apple then proceeded to usher in the new year with the MacBook Air. You maybe pondering about the significance of it being called ‘Air’. Let me puzzle you even further before giving an insight. “There’s something in the air” is what Steve Jobs, Apple CEO said, before bringing in an envelope on stage that had the new MacBook, MacBook Air. It is the third in the series of notebooks by Apple after MacBook and MacBook Pro.

MacBook Air is the world’s thinnest notebook and has been designed by Apple. It is as thin as one’s index finger. To be precise, the thinnest part is 0.16 inches and the thickest measures at 0.76 inches. It weighs 3.0 lbs. As mentioned in the presentation by the Apple CEO, the thickest part of the MacBook Air is thinner than the thinnest part of the Sony TZ Series(which had been the thinnest notebook before MacBook Air), though the both weigh almost the same. They call it ‘Thinnovation’ and rightly so.

Despite it being ultrathin and ultralight, it still has a 13.3 inch widescreen LED backlit display, full-size backlit keyboard and a large multi-touch trackpad that supports gestures like two-finger panning, three-finger swipe, rotation, pinch, etc.

MacBook Air comes with the Intel Core 2 Duo processor (1.6GHz or 1.8GHz) which has been compressed to 60% of its size to achieve the dimensions it possesses. It also has an 80GB hard drive, 2GB RAM, built-in iSight camera, MagfSafe connector, USB-2 port, Micro DVI connector with digital and analog video. It supports 8.2.11n Wi-Fi alongwith Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR. It has 5 hours of battery life

However, there is something missing – an optical drive. Yes, there is no CD/DVD drive built into the MacBook Air. There are two alternates available. You can both connect to the optical drive of a Mac or a PC remotely via Wi-Fi and use it as if it was attached with the MacBook Air. The other alternative is to buy the USB powered SuperDrive built by Apple.

The MacBook Air has been priced at $1799 with the option of buying a SuperDrive at an additional cost of $99.